Much credit for the exhibit that opened Friday must go to Larry Ellison, America's Cup competitor and co-founder of Oracle Corp., who first experienced his affinity for the arts of Japan while working there in the 1970s. Being one of the world's richest people gives him the freedom to collect without stint but it guarantees nothing in the way of taste.

Ellison, who personally studies and approves every proposed acquisition, not only knows what he likes - and what to like - he knows whom to ask for advice. He hired Emily Sano, director emerita of the AAM and a recognized scholar in the field, as his collection manager soon after her retirement in 2007.

Although Sano provided advice on the selection and design of "In the Moment," Allen's decisions pervade it. Some thought about time implicitly figures in every art museum exhibition, but time as an axis of creation and appreciation explicitly informs this show.

Emphasis falls repeatedly on the occasional character of many traditional Japanese artworks, the timing and the punctuating effects of their uses in sacred, ceremonial or domestic settings.

Ellison reportedly has objects in his collection rotated biweekly in his Japanese-style Woodside home, consonant with traditional practice and with their sensitivity to exposure. Seven of the works initially at the museum will be exchanged for others in the Ellison collection on Aug. 19.

The small gallery that opens the show features a risky bit of stagecraft new to me.

Containing an early 17th century pair of six-fold screens that depict "Waves and Rocks," the enclosure has programmed illumination that compresses a day's transit of sunlight and darkness into a cycle of several minutes.

The effect seems hokey at first, especially owing to a subdued soundtrack that reinforces the impression of cycling hours with birdsong and such. But carefully watching the screens' changing aspects restores the sobriety of the situation. Shifting light animates - and of course, accelerates - the narrative quality implicit in the portrayal of rocky shore aswirl with waves. But visitors will take the point that the frozen situation of conventional museum display does not best represent the appreciation that traditional Japanese arts solicit.

"In the Moment" keeps interactivity to a minimum, but preprogrammed iPads in the second gallery definitely aid a viewer's appreciation of the grand late 16th century pair of six-fold screens designated "Twenty Four Paragons of Filial Piety, Bird and Flower, and Landscape Fans on Flowing Water."

Two-thirds of the 36 painted fan papers adhered to the screens illustrate a homiletic literary classic by a Yuan Dynasty scholar known as Yizi. The iPads permit a viewer to extract an image of each fan and read a brief commentary on its content.

"In the Moment" merely samples the Ellison collection, which runs to several hundred artifacts. But it comes much closer to offering a profile of his taste than a synopsis of Japanese art history.

Sacred artifacts form a small portion of the present selection. But the few sculptures include a miniature wood carving of the seated bodhisattva Kokuzo, its presence far out of proportion to its size.

"In the Moment" also features little calligraphy. But the spectacular 17th century set of screens labeled "Waka Poems Over Autumn Grasses and Morning Glories With Scattered Fans" dramatizes the confidence demanded of the artist who had to decorate the gold-ground voids with tendrils of poetry in cursive script.

Ellison's taste seems to run to plant and animal imagery, some of the latter emphasizing depiction, such as the magnificent 18th century screen ensemble "Maize and Coxcomb," and some metaphor, such as Hokusai's electrifying hanging scroll "Dragon" (1839), which he might have conceived as a self-portrait.

Metalwork - and not the sword blades we might expect - is part of the surprise of "In the Moment."

The exhibition blazingly reforges the thinning link between private collecting and connoisseurship, leaving open the question whether, absent great personal wealth, it can endure.